1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of network-attached peripheral devices. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for interfacing a network-attached peripheral device to a host computer system.
2. Background of the Related Art
Presently, a host computer system can access remotely-located SCSI (small computer system interface) block devices over a computer network, whether a wide area network (WAN) or a local area network (LAN). For example, S. Holz et al., “Internet Protocols for Network-Attached Peripherals”, Proc. Sixth NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies in conjunction with 15th IEEE Symposium on Mass Storage Systems, March, 1998 (http://www.isi.edu/netstation/ip-for-naps.ps), disclose an Internet Protocol (IP)-based technique for communicating with network attached peripherals (NAPs). According to Holz et al., the disclosed IP-based technique supports heterogeneous network media, wide-area connectivity and reduced research and development effort.
R. Van Meter et al., “VISA: Netstation's Virtual Internet SCSI Adapter” (http://www.isi.edu/netstation/visa.share.ps), disclose an implementation of a Virtual Internet SCSI Adapter (VISA) in which the UDP/IP protocol is used for reaching more than 80% of SCSI's maximum throughput without the use of network coprocessors.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,996,024 to Bhumenau relates to a SCSI network apparatus that presents a SCSI device interface to a host computer for translating SCSI commands in packets over a network to one or more network SCSI server applications on other computers or specialized controllers. U.S. Pat. No. 5,491,812 to Pisello et al. relates to a method and apparatus for interfacing a SCSI device directly to an Ethernet network.
The Internet Engineering Task Force has commissioned a workgroup to develop protocols for storage over IP networks. One of the proposed protocols is iSCSI, which encapsulates SCSI over TCP/IP (http://search.ietf.org:80/search/cgi-bin/BrokerQuery.pl.cgi?broker=internet-drafts$query=iscsi). iSCSI provides a mechanism for sending and receiving SCSI-based communication messages over a network.
Nevertheless, what is needed is a way to interface a host computer system to a remotely-located non-SCSI (heterogeneous) device over a computer network, thereby making the non-SCSI device appear to be a local SCSI device to the host computer.